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Sunday, June 7, 2009

So, have you heard? There's a new baking kid (or kids, as it may be) in town, with a brand new challenge for the world of oven and flour owners worldwide. They are the undertakers of one of the most insanely delicious feats I've come across, baking their ways merrily through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice! Now, since I (sadly) haven't acquired that book yet (fingers crossed!) I figured I would live vicariously through their experiences, picking and choosing the recipes that my family would eat (and I could afford!).

I couldn't help but notice one of their delicious undertakings being bagels. Now, I am nowhere NEAR the bagel / bread expert that Reinhart is, I did use his recipe as the learning platform for all the bagelly goodness on this blog (inlcluding all of the ones on this post). So, though these bagels are all total rip-offs and are in no way affiliated with the BBA challenge, you must admit I have pretty awesome timing! Do, please do, if you own this book, check out the challenge at Pinch My Salt's blog. New members are always welcome from what I've seen and by gooy would you have a learning experience 10x better than in any classroom!

Because I have been completely remiss in keeping up with these bagel posts (and posts in general!) I'll condense the rest of the post into the just the 3 recipes I have for you. Yes, I know there are 4 different bagels in the photos, but I don't think I bothered writing down the first batch's formula since it was my earlier Sourdough Bagel recipe with the simple addition of granulated garlic, oregano, black pepper and parmesan cheese. I actually made these more to use up some of the ingredients from the pantry's ever growing stock than for my mom to fall in love with. I mean, don't get me wrong, she liked them (especially with cream cheese), but she likes her carbs to come sweet.

Sweet it shall be, then! My next bagels were created as a tribute to one of my mom's favourite desserts of all time: Pecan Pie. Through random fits of late night brainstorming, I came up with a combination of ingredients (including golden corn syrup, toasted pecans, evaporated milk and Skor toffee!) that approximated the flavour and gooeyness of the Southern treat. I was just taking them out of the oven when she came home from work, and the first thing she said was "it smells like pecan pie in here!". These bagels were probably devoured the fastest of any batch I've made yet - and apparently toasted with honey (did I mention she likes sweet?) was the order of the day.

I made some bagels with fruit too, just a week after the pecan pie treasures, just so my mom could justify her bready noshing (only to herself, because really, who doesn't like carbs?) as being a source of antioxidants. I went for the double-whammy effect on the antioxidant front, since when I went into my freezer that morning for some lemon zest (my original pairing plan with the cherries) I came across an open bag of walnuts that I had tossed in there at some point. Since they were chopped fairly small, their taste was able to permeate the entire dough while still having that tiny crunch feeling with every bite.

The most recent (and last for this post!) bagel making adventure involved brown sugar, flaxseed, cereal and maple! I definitely planned these out as "breakfast bagels", though I can attest to the fact that they were eaten as not only breakfast, but for second breakfast, elevensies, and occasionally afternoon tea. One may have served as dinner that week too.

So, thus ends my tale of recent bagelling! When I hit the "exam wall" at college (yeah, these recipes/photos are that old) I had to scale back my projects to more or less single-processes (2 rises + bake) versus the additional boiling time and attention bagels demand. Were these bagels Reinhart quality? Doubtful - I never retarded the dough overnight, nor did I follow a set formula anywhere near as detailed as The Master would have documented. These bagels were chewy, dense and shiny like all the other (real) bagels in this world, yet they were something different. They were pieces of me tht I could give back to my mom!